One of the first quests you’ll play, sends you to search for a missing soldier in the middle of the field of a battle happened a few days before. On the other hand, war in The Witcher 3 is something that touched me deeply, as it’s tangible and tragically human. It still felt a lot like a fairy tale conflict. Even The Witcher 2 failed to achieve this, mostly due to the excessively supernatural nature of the events associated with the theme. In most other games war is simply a plot device, while in The Witcher 3 it’s a living and breathing entity that pervades everything around Geralt, and its tragic nature that eats everything and everyone hits the player like a hammer in the face. I don’t think I ever played a game (especially of the AAA sort), that really made me feel the tragedy of war as something tangible and omnipresent as it should be. Something that really stroke home is how the game tackles the depiction of war: many games touch the topic, but few manage to do it in a realistic way that truly stirs the emotions it should. The World of The Witcher 3 is so rich that I often felt like just cantering around on my horse at the slowest possible pace to observe and enjoy what was going on around me. Most open world games feel pretty lifeless, with NPCs going about their lifeless routines, and a whole lot of space barely filled with not enough substance. The world itself feels just as alive, and I’m not even talking about graphics. The rest of the cast is also masterfully designed and written. Meeting each character, including many secondary ones, is a true pleasure, with each conversation revealing a microcosm of emotions and motives that really feels natural and interesting at all times. In the worn-out shoes of Geralt of Rivia I felt perfectly at home. The Witcher 3 still didn’t cross that gap with its graphics, but it definitely jumps over that sort of uncanny valley that makes so many video game characters feel somewhat unnatural in the way they behave and see their own world. Most think of the “uncanny valley” as something purely visual.

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